Marietta Part 18

"One of you must give Zorzi his place," said Giovanni, in a tone of authority.

The little foreman turned quite round in his chair and looked on. There was no reply. The pale men went on with their work as if Giovanni were not there, and Zorzi leaned calmly on his blow-pipe. Giovanni moved a step forward and spoke directly to one of the men who had just dropped a finished gla.s.s into the bed of soft wood ashes, to be taken to the annealing oven.

"Stop working for a while," he said. "Let Zorzi have your place."

"The foreman gives orders here, not you," answered the man coolly, and he prepared to begin another piece.

Giovanni was very angry, but there were too many of the workmen, and he did not say what rose to his lips, but crossed over to the foreman. Zorzi kept his place, waiting to see what might happen.

"Will you be so good as to order one of the men to give up his place?" Giovanni asked.

The old foreman smiled at this humble acknowledgment of his authority, but he argued the point before acceding.

"The men know well enough what Zorzi can do," he answered in a low voice. "They dislike him, because he is not one of us. I advise you to take him to your own gla.s.s-house, sir, if you wish to see him work. You will only make trouble here."

"I am not afraid of any trouble, I tell you," replied Giovanni. "Please do what I ask."

"Very well. I will, but I take no responsibility before the master if there is a disturbance. The men are in a bad humour and the weather is hot."

"I will be responsible to my father," said Giovanni.

"Very well," repeated the old man. "You are a gla.s.s-maker yourself, like the rest of us. You know how we look upon foreigners who steal their knowledge of our art."

"I wish to make sure that he has really stolen something of it."

The foreman laughed outright.

"You will be convinced soon enough!" he said. "Give your place to the foreigner, Piero," he added, speaking to the man who had refused to move at Giovanni's bidding.

Piero at once chilled the fresh lump of gla.s.s he had begun to fas.h.i.+on and smashed it off the tube into the refuse jar. Without a word Zorzi took his place. While he warmed the end of his blow-pipe at the 'bocca' he looked to right and left to see where the working-stool and marver were placed, and to be sure that the few tools he needed were at hand, the pontil, the 'procello,'-that is, the small elastic tongs for modelling-and the shears. Piero's apprentice had retired to a distance, as he had received no special orders, and the workmen hoped that Zorzi would find himself in difficulty at the moment when he would turn in the expectation of finding the a.s.sistant at his elbow. But Zorzi was used to helping himself. He pushed his blow-pipe into the melted gla.s.s and drew it out, let it cool a moment and then thrust it in again to take up more of the stuff.

The men went on with their work, seeming to pay no attention to him, and Piero turned his back and talked to the foreman in low tones. Only Giovanni watched, standing far enough back to be out of reach of the long blow-pipe if Zorzi should unexpectedly swing it to its full length. Zorzi was confident and unconcerned, though he was fully aware that the men were watching every movement he made, while pretending not to see. He knew also that owing to his being partly self-taught he did certain things in ways of his own. They should see that his ways were as good as theirs, and what was more, that he needed no help, while none of them could do anything without an apprentice.

The gla.s.s grew and swelled, lengthened and contracted with his breath and under his touch, and the men, furtively watching him, were amazed to see how much he could do while the piece was still on the blow-pipe. But when he could do no more they thought that he would have trouble. He did not even turn his head to see whether any one was near to help him. At the exact moment when the work was cool enough to stand he attached the pontil with its drop of liquid gla.s.s to the lower end, as he had done many a time in the laboratory, and before those who looked on could fully understand how he had done it without a.s.sistance, the long and heavy blow-pipe lay on the floor and Zorzi held his piece on the lighter pontil, heating it again at the fire.

The men did not stop working, but they glanced at each other and nodded, when Zorzi could not see them. Giovanni uttered a low exclamation of surprise. The foreman alone now watched Zorzi with genuine admiration; there was no mistaking the jealous att.i.tude of the others. It was not the mean envy of the inferior artist, either, for they were men who, in their way, loved art as Beroviero himself did, and if Zorzi had been a new companion recently promoted from the state of apprentices.h.i.+p in the guild, they would have looked on in wonder and delight, even if, at the very beginning, he outdid them all. What they felt was quite different. It was the deep, fierce hatred of the mediaeval guildsman for the stranger who had stolen knowledge without apprentices.h.i.+p and without citizens.h.i.+p, and it was made more intense because the gla.s.s-blowers were the only guild that excluded every foreign-born man, without any exception. It was a shame to them to be outdone by one who had not their blood, nor their teaching, nor their high acknowledged rights.

They were peaceable men in their way, not given to quarrelling, nor vicious; yet, excepting the mild old foreman, there was not one of them who would not gladly have brought his iron blow-pipe down on Zorzi's head with a two-handed swing, to strike the life out of the intruder.

Zorzi's deft hands made the large piece he was forming spin on itself and take new shape at every turn, until it had the perfect curve of those slim-necked Eastern vessels for pouring water upon the hands, which have not even now quite degenerated from their early grace of form. While it was still very hot, he took a sharp pointed knife from his belt and with a turn of his hand cut a small round hole, low down on one side. The mouth was widened and then turned in and out like the leaf of a carnation. He left the cooling piece on the pontil, lying across the arms of the stool, and took his blow-pipe again.

"Has the fellow not finished his tricks yet?" asked Piero discontentedly.

It would have given him pleasure to smash the beautiful thing to atoms where it lay, almost within his reach. Zorzi began to make the spout, for it was a large ampulla that he was fas.h.i.+oning. He drew the gla.s.s out, widened it, narrowed it, cut it, bent it and finished off the nozzle before he touched it with wet iron and made it drop into the ashes. A moment later he had heated the thick end of it again and was welding it over the hole he had made in the body of the vessel.

"The man has three hands!" exclaimed the foreman.

"And two of them are for stealing," added Piero.

"Or all three," put in the beetle-browed man who was working next to Zorzi.

Zorzi looked at him coldly a moment, but said nothing. They did not mean that he was a thief, except in the sense that he had stolen his knowledge of their art. He went on to make the handle of the ampulla, an easy matter compared with making the spout. But the highest part of gla.s.s-blowing lies in shaping graceful curves, and it is often in the smallest differences of measurement that the pieces made by Beroviero and Zorzi-preserved intact to this day-differ from similar things made by lesser artists. Yet in those little variations lies all the great secret that divides grace from awkwardness. Zorzi now had the whole vessel, with its spout and handle, on the pontil. It was finished, but he could still ornament it. His own instinct was to let it alone, leaving its perfect shape and airy lightness to be its only beauty, and he turned it thoughtfully as he looked at it, hesitating whether he should detach it from the iron, or do more.

"If you have finished your nonsense, let me come back to my work," said Piero behind him.

Zorzi did not turn to answer, for he had decided to add some delicate ornaments, merely to show Giovanni that he was a full master of the art. The dark-browed man had just collected a heavy lump of gla.s.s on the end of his blow-pipe, and was blowing into it before giving it the first swing that would lengthen it out. He and Piero exchanged glances, unnoticed by Zorzi, who had become almost unconscious of their hostile presence. He began to take little drops of gla.s.s from the furnace on the end of a thin iron, and he drew them out into thick threads and heated them again and laid them on the body of the ampulla, twisting and turning each bit till he had no more, and forming a regular raised design on the surface. His neighbour seemed to get no further with what he was doing, though he busily heated and reheated his lump of gla.s.s and again and again swung his blow-pipe round his head, and backward and forward. The foreman was too much interested in Zorzi to notice what the others were doing.

Zorzi was putting the last touches to his work. In a moment it would be finished and ready to go to the annealing oven, though he was even then reflecting that the workmen would certainly break it up as soon as the foreman turned his back. The man next to him swung his blow-pipe again, loaded with red-hot gla.s.s.

It slipped from his hand, and the hot ma.s.s, with the full weight of the heavy iron behind it, landed on Zorzi's right foot, three paces away, with frightful force. He uttered a sharp cry of surprise and pain. The lovely vessel he had made flew from his hands and broke into a thousand tiny fragments. In excruciating agony he lifted the injured foot from the ground and stood upon the other. Not a hand was stretched out to help him, and he felt that he was growing dizzy. He made a frantic effort to hop on one leg towards the furnace, so as to lean against the brickwork. Piero laughed.

"He is a dancer!" he cried. "He is a 'ballarino'!" The others all laughed, too, and the name remained his as long as he lived-he was Zorzi Ballarin.

The old foreman came to help him, seeing that he was really injured, for no one had quite realised it at first. Savagely as they hated him, the workmen would not have tortured him, though they might have killed him outright if they had dared. Excepting Piero and the man who had hurt him, the workmen all went on with their work.

He was ghastly pale, and great drops of sweat rolled down his forehead as he reached the foreman's chair and sat down: but after the first cry he had uttered, he made no sound. The foreman could hear how his teeth ground upon each other as he mastered the frightful suffering. Giovanni came, and stood looking at the helpless foot, smashed by the weight that had fallen upon it and burned to the bone in an instant by the molten gla.s.s.

"I cannot walk," he said at last to the foreman. "Will you help me?"

His voice was steady but weak. The foreman and Giovanni helped him to stand on his left foot, and putting his arms round their necks he swung himself along as he could. The dark man had picked up his blow-pipe and was at work again.

"You will pay for that when the master comes back," Piero said to him as Zorzi pa.s.sed. "You will starve if you are not careful."

Zorzi turned his head and looked the dark man full in the eyes.

"It was an accident," he said faintly. "You did not mean to do it."

The man looked away shamefacedly, for he knew that even if he had not meant to injure Zorzi for life, he had meant to hurt him if he could.

As for Giovanni, he was puzzled by all that had happened so unexpectedly, for he was a dull man, though very keen for gain, and he did not understand human nature. He disliked Zorzi, but during the morning he had become convinced that the gifted young artist was a valuable piece of property, and not, as he had supposed, a clever flatterer who had wormed himself into old Beroviero's confidence. A man who could make such things was worth much money to his master. There were kings and princes, from the Pope to the Emperor, who would have given a round sum in gold for the beautiful ampulla of which only a heap of tiny fragments were now left to be swept away.

The two men brought Zorzi across the garden to the door of the laboratory. Leaning heavily on the foreman he got the key out, and Giovanni turned it in the lock. They would have taken him to the small inner room, to lay him on his pallet bed, but he would not go.

"The bench," he managed to say, indicating it with a nod of his head.

There was an old leathern pillow in the big chair. The foreman took it and placed it under Zorzi's head.

"We must get a surgeon to dress his wound," said the foreman.

"I will send for one," answered Giovanni. "Is there anything you want now?" he asked, with an attempt to speak kindly to the valuable piece of property that lay helpless before him.

"Water," said Zorzi very faintly. "And feed the fire-it must be time."

The foreman dipped a cupful of water from an earthen jar, held up his head and helped him to drink. Giovanni pushed some wood into the furnace.

"I will send for a surgeon," he repeated, and went out.

Zorzi closed his eyes, and the foreman stood looking at him.